Nabi Ahmed, a dairy farmer in Aliabad, with his cows, a few of whom were artificially inseminated. Credit: Muhammad Hadi/IPS

By Zofeen Ebrahim
KARACHI, Mar 16 2013 (IPS)

Mohammad Ali’s routine has not changed in over three decades. A small dairy farmer in the village of Aliabad, in the Narowal district of Pakistan’s eastern Punjab province, he wakes at sunrise and walks to the barn to milk his three cows manually, stopping only for a breakfast of unleavened bread and tea heavily laced with milk before getting back to work.

Unfazed by the multitude of flies hovering around the stainless steel milk buckets, he carefully transfers their contents to an aluminium container and, securing it firmly on his motorbike, heads off to the nearest shop that purchases 14 litres of milk from him every day.

For many years, the forty-year-old farmer had accepted that each of his cows would produce no more than three to four litres of milk a day, hardly enough to put food on the table and clothes on his back.

Until he heard of Jassar Farms, that is. Located in a village by the same name just two kilometres away, as Ali learnt from his neighbour, cows on Jassar farm produce three times the quantity of milk as the cattle in Aliabad.

Run by Shahzad Iqbal, a 43-year-old social entrepreneur, this “miracle” farm – on which over 500 of the 600 cows produce 12 to 14 litres a day – began in 2007, based on a scientific model and backed by a sound business plan.

“I began by importing the embryos of pure exotic bulls instead of the more common practice of importing elite cows from the United States or Australia that cost thousands of dollars,” Iqbal told IPS.

He then used local cows as surrogates and once the first generation was born, started crossbreeding them with his own herd.

Iqbal sees great potential in Pakistan’s dairy and livestock industry, which engages roughly 20 percent of Pakistan’s population. About 8.5 million small and landless families in rural areas comprise the bulk of the dairy and livestock sector, with 35 to 40 million people dependent on it for a living. Most farmers own just three or four cows.

With a herd of 162 million animals, including cows, buffalo, sheep, goats, camels, horses, asses and mules, Pakistan has the world’s fourth largest livestock population.

Speaking to IPS over the phone from Narowal, Iqbal admitted, “The attitudes of these poor farmers are hard to change.” But change is exactly what he is after, convinced that artificial insemination could push milk production up by a minimum of 2,000 litres per animal per year.

This “translates into 80,000 rupees (814 dollars) extra revenue for every farmer from each animal if the milk is sold at the current rate of 40 rupees (.40 dollars) per litre,” he says.

“According to the Economic Survey of Pakistan, livestock generates 40 percent of rural income and 11.6 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) — if we can double the yield, we can contribute significantly to Pakistan’s GDP,” he added.

If farmers could embrace scientific practices, he said, the country could produce an extra 16 billion litres of milk per year.

Given its advantageous geographic location, Pakistan would then be poised to become a leading supplier of milk and dairy-based products to import-dependent “Islamic countries, from Malaysia to Morocco”.

But based on the 2006 national livestock census, estimated milk production for 2011-12 was just 42 billion litres, scarcely enough to meet the country’s own demand: according to Iqbal, the country spends half a billion dollars annually to import milk-based products.

In an effort to fill this gap in yield, Jassar Farms now produces “high quality” bull semen at an affordable price. Utilising a network of 6,000 technicians, the enterprise distributes 75,000 doses per month from Punjab to Sindh, at a bargain price of 150 to 300 rupees (1.5 to three dollars).

Rizwan Hameed, a marketing graduate working at Iqbal’s farm, told IPS that the quality of this semen can be compared to elite imported varieties but comes at a much cheaper rate.

“Our dose is tenfold cheaper than the comparable imported variety, which is available at 2,000 rupees (20 dollars),” he said.

Keeping it local

Dr. Tanveer Ahmad,  at the Livestock Production and Management Department of the Arid Agriculture University in Rawalpindi, agrees that artificial insemination could result in a genetically superior herd, thereby “decreasing the spread of veneral diseases and increasing the yield”.

But he fears lax market regulations could compromise the health of local breeds.

“There is indiscriminate insemination going on, which could spoil our pure breeds,” he told IPS.

He favours the use of high quality semen taken from local beasts like Sahiwal cattle, which originated here in the Punjab, rather than the imported variety “because our local elite animals are more resistant to the weather and environment, can endure the heat and do not develop ticks the way cross-bred imported varieties do”.

Irfan Elahi, secretary of the Punjab Livestock Department, echoed his words. Talking to IPS over the phone from Lahore, Elahi said a bill has recently been tabled in the Punjab provincial assembly, aimed at regulating semen production units across the province.

There is already a ban on artificial insemination of Sahiwal cattle with exotic semen – these beasts can only be inseminated with better quality semen from the same breed, he added.

The Punjab government has also been actively engaged in livestock research and in 2006 began testing the progeny of Sahiwal cows and the local Nili-Ravi buffalo.

In addition, the Punjab provincial government has set up 976 artificial insemination centres to provide services to smallholders. The Punjab Livestock and Dairy Development Board is training inseminators and provides them motorbikes and insemination kits free of cost to provide services in the field, where the Livestock Department has limited reach.

Still, many farmers are reluctant to embrace the change.

Shafaqat Ali, a member of the Pakistan Dairy Farmers’ Association, believes this is because the practice is cost-prohibitive: “Each imported dose costs anywhere between 6,000 and 25,000 rupees (60 and 250 dollars) and there is no guarantee that one dose will impregnate the animal.

“An impoverished farmer cannot afford to take the risk and so relies on the natural method,” he told IPS over phone from Faisalabad, a city in the Punjab.

In developed countries, 90 to 92 percent of animals are impregnated through artificial insemination, but the rate in Pakistan is as low as seven to eight percent, according to Iqbal.

(END)

Cattle herder Mohamed Ould Bouthiah has seen the future, and he likes what he sees. “Five of my cows are crossbreeds with a European variety, and those five together produce 80 litres of milk a day.”

Bouthiah, 50, says that with a herd of 150 of the local breed of cows, he could only produce 320 litres of milk per day on his farm in Rosso, in the south of Mauritania, but he could produce the same with just 20 of the hybrid cattle.

“Genetic improvement is the best way to promote cattle rearing, because I can turn a profit with a smaller herd that goes through less fodder,” Bouthiah, a cattle herder in Rosso, south of Mauritania, told IPS.

Mauritanians are big consumers of milk, drinking an average of nearly a litre of milk per person per day, compared to just 0.08 litres per person across sub-Saharan Africa, said Mohamed Lemine Ould Hakky, head of the division responsible for improving animal production at the Ministry for Rural Development. 

According to the ministry, Mauritania imports 70 percent of its dairy needs.

Yet a 2004 study done by the World Bank suggested that if the livestock sector received greater attention, it could meet 70 percent of the country’s dairy needs.

Hakky told IPS that local cattle breeds lacked some important characteristics.

“To overcome these shortcomings, between 2006 and 2009, the rural development ministry put a programme in place to improve the genetic stock and promote animal health. The campaign targeted 1,000 dairy cows in the regions of Trarza, Brakna and Gorgol (in the southwest and southeast of the country),” he said.

Hakky is also responsible for a pilot farm at Idini, 50 kilometres east of the capital, Nouakchott, set up in 2011 to promote meat and diary production. Some 300 cows were inseminated.

While Mauritania’s traditional cattle breeds don’t produce more than three litres of milk per day, the hybrid cattle can produce over 16 litres per day, according to Dr Mohamed Ould Hacen, a vet with the rural development ministry’s livestock office.

When it comes to meat production, Hacen also said that the birthweight for the hybrid calves averages 28 kilos, compared to 16 kg for local breeds.

Zeindine Diallo, who rears cattle at Gorgol, wants better care for the inseminated cows in order to allow the country’s herders to move away from the existing breeds and increase production.

“After three years, the artificial insemination operations, carried out with the technical support of the Inter-State School for Veterinary Science and Medicine based in Dakar (Senegal) are having an effect, as the hybrid heifers themselves begin to calve. Of the 1,000 cows that have been inseminated, we’ve achieved a 40 percent success rate,” Hacen said.

According to Hakky, total consumption of milk in Mauritania is some 52,000 tonnes per year, more than three times greater than domestic production of 12,000 tonnes.

Official trade statistics show that the annual cost of dairy imports into Mauritania is 50 million dollars, according to El Hacen Ould Taleb, a herder and president of the National Grouping of Associations of Pastoral Cooperatives (GNAP).

In November, the minister for rural development, Brahim Ould M’Bareck, announced the creation of two more farms for artificial insemination, at Kankossa Lake in the south of the country, and at the Mahmouda Depression in the southeast.

Fodder will also be grown in these two areas, with help from Chinese experts, the minister added.

GNAP is calling for more extensive scientific research into the sustainability and profitability of the experiment. Taleb told IPS he doesn’t think Mauritania is currently able to produce enough cattle feed for intensive livestock rearing.

The four domestic milk production companies, all based in the capital, can only absorb five percent of the country’s dairy output, Hakky said. The rest, he says, is consumed locally in camps, villages and other cities, and also goes to feed calves, baby camels and smaller livestock.

“We are calling for a facility to be set up to produce long-life milk, and for tanning factories. And for increased production of fodder to allow the country to save the 50 million dollars devoted to imports,” Taleb said. “And – why not, in time – for the export of milk from Mauritania.”